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There was a time when “resellers” distinguished themselves by proudly preferring a particular manufacturer’s products. At the beginning of the channel, having IBM authorization was a gold badge of quality. A few years later Compaq partners also earned respect, and later that became HP partnership. Apple resellers were considered a very special breed, willing to buck the standards.
At various points of time, that “gold badge” status extended to Microsoft Partners, Cisco Partners, Citrix Partners, and many other. Resellers wanted to be known for the company they keep.
Market Homogenization
Under the covers, all the computers involved were fundamentally similar. Similar processors, same memory, compatibility with similar storage solutions. After a while, the differences became unimportant to most customers. The idea “no one ever got fired for buying IBM” basically faded away. Then IBM faded away from the channel it created, selling its PC business to Lenovo.
Customers were willing to accept parity between the server, storage, security, networking, communications, and other products enough that you could consider them fairly homogenous. Over time, partners dug their heels in with their selected partners and rode with them. Today, I challenge anyone to show me a customer who insisted on a specific make of server, switch, router, or other. Customers have learned to depend upon their MSP to make the right choices for them.
